


bitter living through chemistry

by Harmonica_Smile (Rescue_Remedy)



Series: Inspired by [3]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Akainu | Sakazuki - Freeform, Akuma no Mi | Devil Fruit, Aokiji | Kuzan - Freeform, Artificial Devil Fruit (Smile), Canon Universe, Character Study, Complete, Gen, Jaguar D. Saul - Freeform, Nico Olvia - Freeform, Ohara (One Piece), One Shot, Punk Hazard Arc, Wano Arc (One Piece), Wano Arc (One Piece) Spoilers, genuary 2021
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25665574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rescue_Remedy/pseuds/Harmonica_Smile
Summary: Payback, Punk Hazard, Prison. Kid thrown in jail."What were you doing, Nico Robin?" Killer asked. "Up in that cage?" He spoke a touch louder to compensate for the mask.
Relationships: Fushichou Marco ｜Phoenix Marco & Killer (One Piece), Fushichou Marco ｜Phoenix Marco & Killer (One Piece) & Nico Robin, Fushichou Marco ｜Phoenix Marco & Nico Robin, Killer (One Piece) & Nico Robin
Series: Inspired by [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931497
Comments: 10
Kudos: 35
Collections: Genuary 2021, Set Sail One Piece Mid Year Exchange 2020





	bitter living through chemistry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ghostwit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostwit/gifts).



* * *

**bitter living through chemistry**

* * *

Punk Hazard sure brought it back. A girl in a boat buffeted by ridges of ice to safe passage. Fire licked the water where oil had spilt. It burnt her island, her mother, the Library of Ohara. The scholars. The poneglyph would survive. Knowledge would survive. The key to it might not.

The same two men had caused the destruction at Punk Hazard. Akainu—known as Sakazuki at the time—hadn't made the Buster call on Ohara, but he hadn't refused attendance. And firing on civilians with no connection to the scholars, other than having lived on the same land as her friends, guardians and _peers,_ was no better.

He'd sunk the civilians' ship. As if scholars were not civilians. Sank it in case there were any scholars aboard. Called it justice. Questioning the World Government was an act of bad faith.

Ironic justice saved her from being on the ship. The islanders rejected her attempts to climb aboard, yelled out she was a target, a monster. Devil fruit hands lapped one over another in a knuckled ladder-rope. Robin tried to pull herself aboard, but she wasn't wanted. Nothing new there.

Aokiji murdered the one marine who had asked why. Why did the government hunt down those who wanted to learn? Robin met Pedro later, the Mink from Zou. He too was branded _pirate_ because he sought knowledge, just like her mother.

Ex-admiral Jaguar D. Saul froze to death at the then Vice-Admiral Kuzan's hand, but he'd laughed. Saul's will was not extinguished. The Ds. Never extinguished.

 _Dereshi-shishi_. She'd tried to make the noise but gasps and grasps for air rustled the branches of her lungs. _Whywhywhywhy_? Because she'd read the poneglyph? Weren't the archaeologists the pride of Ohara?

She couldn't hear her voice over the screams and pop and snap of bridges and buildings and bones anyway. Not even to herself. Over the blistering of flesh. She felt it. The vibration. _I tried, Saul_. She had tried.

It took two figurative seconds to learn to defy while being decried. Saul told her about her mother, then took her from her mother—newly found, shot down. Would it have been better if they'd been incinerated together? Sometimes she thought so, but her mother had wanted Robin to live.

And here they sat in this room away from the burly Luffy brought into being after victorious battles. Shouts and jeers and clanking tankards and the off-notes of shanties ebbed and flowed through open windows.

Not Saul, nor Nico Olvia, but Killer, Marco, and herself. Robin turned a page of the paper as laughter bubbled Killer's skin. He didn't try to block it, too used to it. Time wasted if he let Kaidou's maladjustment, Doflamingo's experimentation, affect him. Stop him.

Smoke bucketing from the new factories disguised black moths. They blended right in. On Wano too. Their numbers had been fewer than their white-winged cousins before industrialisation. No longer. Survival of the fittest held a few surprises.

* * *

* * *

Cut off, Killer, had less world information than Robin who had less than Marco. But nobody knew Wano's inside story better than Killer, though Robin had peeled away the layers of Orochi's robes, and Marco sure had a bone to pick with the guy.

Robin continued on task. Must've come across some users already, Killer thought, and Marco, while puzzled by the whoops and guffaws and hollers of Kaidou's crew as they killed, complained and bawled in terror, figured the fear-filled cheer was something to do with what Wano had become.

Everyone knew when Roger had died, and Neko and Inu were able to get news out about Oden's sacrifice, but the Minks returned to Zou, and the Whitebeards hadn't been near Wano for an age. Despite Izou. Pop's own plans and visions were vast. His sons were loyal. Wano was isolated.

* * *

Payback, Punk Hazard, Prison. Kid thrown in jail.

"What were you doing, Nico Robin?" Killer asked. "Up in that cage?" He spoke a touch louder to compensate for the mask.

Caesar's poisonous gases had seeped through the illegal surveillance den den that Heat had acquired in some closed-door negotiation, the images projected onto the wall of their headquarters. Just before they'd met Apoo and Hawkins for the alliance. Before Kaidou had fallen from the sky.

"Were you in with the Hearts then? At Punk Hazard?"

Straw hat had quite a following. Killer's shoulders lifted then settled.

Robin took her time. Turned a page. Marco had brought the paper, rolled up in a pouch concealed in his clothes. Nami could have her gold—Robin took intel over cash any day—though the navigator also paid for information. Knew its worth.

She ran a finger down a column on the right. How was the navy going to control the seas without the shichibukai?

"Alliances have a habit of going awry," she said, and she'd been in league with enough devils to know. She looked up at Killer, thought about sending some eyes to the inside of his helmet to get a close-up, but Kamazou was known amongst Orochi's courtesans.

She'd not met him but the other women described the blue-crazed glare, and said that he was a Pleasure. A rush. New vision. Drugs did that. But the wrong chemical reaction created confusion. Smiles increased the number of human chattel, so maybe the name fit.

Doflamingo found pleasure in the torment of others. Orochi was no different.

And Luffy had let Caesar free on Whole Cake Island. Out of mind, out of sight, but not out of circulation.

"But, yes." Robin turned back to the table, folded the paper. "Our captain had joined forces with Trafalgar's."

Retrospect. Regret. Hiccoughs. Killer wished he hadn't ushered Kid out of the room, had stayed to see the poison sidling across the barren snowed-in landscape a bit longer. Seen how that government dog, and the cyborg, the cigar-sucking marine and his subordinate...how did they deal with it? How had they all managed to escape better living through chemistry? Bitter living through chemistry.

The betrayal would've been delayed for one. They might've seen what they were up against. Apoo blasting their hideout to rubble.

"Marco?' Killer polished a scythe on a scrap of cloth he'd cut off some poor sad bastard.

The commander looked over, a pleasant expression disguising his strength. Like Nico Robin. Killer was the same, but literally hid any tells under his helmet. "Flying through the skies, y'ever see Kaidou tumble down?"

Marco scratched at the back of his head, and Robin leant into the conversation.

Stranger things had fallen from the clouds, or had they? Marco bet a few octopuses had scurried away when he dumped the Queen Mama Chanter back into the currents eddying the base of Wano. And Zou _was_ an Island on the back of a wandering elephant.

"Can't say I have."

Killer tested the point of his blade, massive as it was, against a fingertip. He nodded. He placed the scrap to the side. Rested the scythe against the wall.

"Kaidou was so pissed off he hadn't killed himself he decided to screw with us instead." How did a flying dragon imagine he'd off himself by leaping into the void? Had to have been on a bender.

Kid lost an arm to Shanks, and Killer had almost lost Kid to Kaidou. But he hadn't. With the eating of the fruit, the Smile, he hadn't.

"We went to Ebisu," Robin said, turning in her chair to look at Killer and Marco more fully. "We witnessed Shimotsuki Yasuie's execution."

Killer was in the information game. He knew. Marco's eyes clouded.

"I don't think you were in the capital then, Massacre Soldier, and I understand you knew him, Fuschichou-san."

"Knew of him," Marco said. From the stories Inu and Neko told. The tall tales Izou and Oden wove.

Robin nodded. Doflamingo rarely stopped grinning when imprinting his misery on a victims' skin—if the ball was in his court—but he had the choice to switch to anger, his muscles could. Even if it was an unwilling reaction, the muscles obeyed his emotion, though his determination could override them.

The smiling god of good fortune, Ebisu, was welcome in all homes. Turning up unannounced was okay, but when his beaming face mocked the famine and fright of townsfolk, forcing them to treat hardship with a levity they didn't feel...when he outstayed his welcome…. Robin didn't have the words.

Giggles whispered through the torn shoji panels of the rundown rooms where the Straw hats, samurai and Hearts made plans. Kids played outside, eavesdropping. The allies had admired their resilience.

At the execution, laughter filled the courtyard like a funeral ululation while tears soaked the villagers' faces and clothes. Shinobu's distress. O-Toko unable to mourn without mirth. Robin glanced down at the paper. A smile plastered the face of a royal as he hooked a finger under his eye to wipe away moisture not present.

An uproar outside caused her to look up, and the flash of Franky's laser beams lit the sky. Cyborg fireworks commencing.

"Who's the strongest swimmer on your crew, Nico?"

Killer stood at a window, muscled arms pressed down on the sill, the lights danced over his shield. What were those burns?

He stared out at the melee. Kid and Luffy eating everything put in front of them no doubt, eyeing the plate of the other. Law probably given up and slipped away with his crew.

"Sanji's the best swimmer. Zoro's strong, but gets lost when he's not trying to fight the current. Usopp's good too. He doesn't get as angry as the others." As if Sanji ever got angry at her.

"But you rarely fall overboard," Marco said, studying his fingers and nails, the den den beside him asleep.

She twisted her neck his way. "No, not often." Her devil fruit was useful. She didn't play hide and seek. If she found herself in the water it was the work of an enemy, or bad weather. Of not being aware, and she was rarely unaware.

"Your captain, Massacre Soldier?" Robin asked.

"Fished him out more times than I can remember."

The laugh below the laugh seemed genuine.

"Wire can't swim."

"Fruit user?" Marco walked across the room. He thought of flying, but even his swagger had its limits. Killer shook his head.

"Then he can learn."

"Kid's heavy."

"Wire's big," Robin added.

"Yeah," they were right, he shouldn't question his crew even if Wire didn't like getting runs in his fishnets. Best to get information while he could, though, from the Demon Child and the Phoenix. Cagey with news because it was valuable.

Killer sat on the wider ledge of the sill and Marco settled beside him, pulling one knee up. This man had known Roger.

"What's behind your smile, Robin?" Slightly less formal. Killer turned Marco's way. "And yours, commander?" He knew they could snap his neck or break his back or try to.

Marco and Robin looked at one another. _You first. No you_. Robin decorated the round edges of the table with extra hands as she spoke, fingers waving like sea anemone, emphasising her points.

She sent that small upward turn of her lips Killer's way now, before returning her gaze to all the fingers dancing in conversation. Killer faced her directly to avoid distraction.

"The ability to say fuck you should be seen or heard or felt," Robin said.

Even when your mother was shot, your island on fire, and your closest friends executed under a bullet spray of government indignation.

Marco lit a flame and watched it move from one side of his palm to the other. Could he restore balance, restore things to what they'd been? Killer shook beside him. Not fear. Two of Robin's fruit hands finger-gunned the Phoenix. His turn. Killer twisted his way, and Marco rotated the blue, over and over.

"What our scholar said. Roger met his death with the widest grin. Whitebeard and Roger shared sake under the sakura, and laughter wasn't a stranger on the Moby Dick, or among the fleet."

"Fuck them," Robin said, as politely as requesting a cup of tea from Sanji. "They can't beat us unless we let them. So I always meet the enemy in my own way." All of her hands circling the table gripped together in a synchronised clutch. Killer and Marco cupped the back of their necks.

To smile in the face of adversity was one thing. For the smile to be the adversity was another. To mask distress in joy. To take away the right to scoff when met with brutality, stupidity, misjudgement.

How would Saul have coped?

With a smile. With a smile. In spite of a smile. Through a smile. When things got unbearable, it's what she did.

**Author's Note:**

> This was part of the _[Set Sail One Piece Mid Year Exchange 2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SetSail2020/works)_ for exrocist on tumblr. The requirements/ requests were:
>
>> Would like to receive: No preference, fanart or fanfiction is fine.  
> Top three characters: Killer, Nico Robin, Marco  
> Top three relationships: Roronoa Zoro/Sanji, Eustass Kid/Killer, Marco(&/)Sabo  
> Content they enjoy: Prefer canon compliant, but if you're particularly itching for AU seeing someone else's take on a circus AU or something with soulmates would be nice! Not super picky so I'll be happy with whatever :) Thank you!  
> 
> 
> I'm hoping I ticked some of the boxes. Hope you enjoy😊


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